Beyond Narrative Relief: Exploring the Impacts of Lacking Feedback and Perceived Cyber-Ostracism Based on the Temporal Need-Threat Model.

Abstract

Social media are increasingly becoming public venues for patients to create and share illness narratives. While prior research has primarily focused on the positive and supportive roles of social media in patients' seeking and obtaining social support, little is known about the possible negative impacts of lacking feedback when sharing illness narratives on these connected and interactive platforms. By incorporating the notion of cyber-ostracism from social psychology and drawing upon Williams's temporal need-threat model (TNTM), this study proposed and tested a series of serial-parallel mediation models that link feedback amount, psychological well-being, and/or various coping intentions (i.e. to withdraw from social media narration sharing and to positively/negatively comment on others' narratives), sequentially through perceived ostracism and different need satisfaction (i.e. for belonging, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and control). Findings of this study move beyond the longstanding focus on the narrative relief effects, shedding light on the backfire effects of sharing illness narratives when such narratives received little or even no feedback from others in the social media environment.